Hasta La Ideas

Ji Lee’s entertaining book of letters in their most graphic element

Seeing the world through the eyes of Ji Lee means every billboard is a blank canvas, the alphabet has three-dimensional form and words are actually images. The former Creative Director at Google Creative Labs playfully communicates through visual design, depicting clever messages that are sometimes obvious and sometimes abstract, but always on point.

Joining Talk Back and Univers Revolved in the collection of Lee’s independent projects to take book form is Word as Image, which illustrates 100 of his “head-scratching” designs, some of which we first saw in his talk at 99% in 2009. Whether it’s turning the letter “A” into Dali’s famous mustache or reducing Christianity down to a few meaningful letters, Lee’s tongue-in-cheek outlook never dulls.

The book also challenges the reader to take their turn at crafting word images, offering insightful tips on the various ways you can play with letters, eventually reducing words down to a graphic form. Playing with scale, covering letters up or seeing letters as objects are all some of the ways Lee astutely outsmarts simple words.

An entertaining and enlightening book, Word as Image sells online from Penguin and Amazon.